Moody Food (27 page)

IT WAS CHRISTINE'S FAULT.

If she hadn't been so busy trying to save the world she would have tuned in to what was going on in her own backyard and supplied Heather with enough books on the dynamics of abusive relationships and the necessity of positive female self-esteem so that if Thomas ever pulled that kind of crap again he'd get his heart broken as well as his testicles. As it was, she complimented Heather on her brand new makeup job. Heather touched her pancaked eye and said thanks.

It was Thomas's fault.

No one knows what goes on between a man and a woman when the door gets shut, but boys don't hit girls. Sandbox Commandment Number One: Boys don't hit girls. It doesn't matter what she said or even what she did when you weren't around. Curse, yell, bust up her record collection if you must, only don't touch the girl. It's just one of the rules. Thomas broke the rules.

It was Heather's fault.

What do you expect when, whenever your master's voice calls, you're there before the words are out of his mouth? Don't you know
that need feeds need? Maybe next time you come running as usual but not quite quickly enough. Maybe next time you don't love him enough or read his mind well enough or forgive him enough.

It wasn't my fault.

Like the bumper sticker says, Don't Blame Me, I Didn't Vote for What's-His-Name. I didn't actually make it to the voting booth myself, but I wanted the other guy to win. You know who I mean. What's-His-Name.

SATURDAY NIGHT SO SOON, and everyone but Colin and me not anywhere near as tickled as they were supposed to be about the Whisky asking us back for seven more nights. Between Rod's rave in
Open Wound
and general groovy word of mouth, by the end of the week people were starting to talk and the club was always busy if never quite full. Colin let us know the good news right after what was supposed to be our final sound check. He joined us up on stage balancing a bottle of Dom Perignon, five glasses, and a bottle of Coke for Slippery.

“And we've already got two more print interviews lined up for next week and are real close to getting you a local TV slot on a fundraiser for the free clinic the night of your last gig. Some of the best bands from around here are dying to get on. It'll be incredible exposure.”

“I'm not missing the sit-down on the eleventh,” Christine said. “I haven't gone without sleep for four days just so I can stand around smiling for some cameraman.”

After every night's show Lee and Emily would whisk Christine off to do whatever it was they did to get ready for the protest. Although they were never anything but smiley-smile nice to me for the few minutes I saw them post-gig, I'd begun to periodically
and without any warning whatsoever feel furious hot flashes of intensely physical rage toward them for trying to slowly turn Christine against me and, at the same time, convert her into a lesbian like them. I had no proof, not a scrap of evidence, and absolutely no reason for believing any of this. Not that that made me feel any better when I'd swim my laps and imagine with every stroke bludgeoning each of them to a chlorinated death. To my credit, though, I did notice that I tended to get most worked up when I was most coked up, so I never said anything.

“The eleventh is not a problem,” Colin said, working on the champagne bottle's cork. “The sit-down is in the afternoon and the fundraiser is an all-day and all-night deal. They're talking about you guys playing the 3 a.m. spot. We'll all drive over right after your show here. And I think it's just great the way you guys have become such a part of the community so quickly.”

Slippery stood up behind his instrument. He took out a Marlboro and stuck it in the side of his mouth.

“One more week,” he said, “that's it. Then we start north.” It was supposed to be a question, I think, but that's not how it came out.

“Theoretically, yes,” Colin said. “The way we're going gangbusters in the studio, we should have the album wrapped up by Monday, Tuesday at the latest. Then we start mixing. But you never know what's going to happen.”

“Meaning?” Christine said.

“Meaning, I didn't want to say anything until we knew more about it, but ...” He popped the cork and a brief slosh of champagne splashed onto the stage. Mine was the only outstretched glass. He filled it first.

“C'mon,” I said. “But what?”

“I didn't want to spook you guys at the time, but I know the guy who manages the Byrds pretty well and he tipped me off that McGuinn and Hillman were coming down to catch your act on
Wednesday night. And it turns out that they really dug it, Hillman especially.”

Colin looked over at Thomas, who still had his guitar around his neck and was slumped over with his back to us sitting on top of his amplifier near the rear of the stage. He hadn't had his pre-show snorts yet and, what was more, judging by the way he'd mumbled his way through the sound check, I was pretty sure he'd snuck down a Nembutal on the way over. I should have known something was up when he asked Christine to drive.

“Hillman played mandolin in a bluegrass band for a couple of years before he even picked up an electric bass, you know,” Colin called out.

It hadn't taken him long to get over the sight of Thomas and Heather greeting amused but confused Whisky-goers of a couple nights before with freshly made salads and the repeated boost that “Vegetarians taste better,” even if Colin and his guest for the evening, Fillmore East mover and shaker Bill Graham, were among the slightly stunned recipients. Afterward, Graham told Colin he'd loved our act and would be in touch. Colin had been ecstatic.

“I think the name of their band was the Hillmen,” Colin said. “You ever heard of them?” Thomas didn't move or speak. Colin turned back to us.

“Anyway, it turns out that the Byrds are heading out on a mini-tour of the east coast at the beginning of January, and the Springfield, who were supposed to open up for them, have decided that since their own album is coming out they're not going to do anything but headline any more, so the opportunity is there and I've made a few calls and ...” He raised his eyebrows and with one hand crossed his fingers and with the other motioned with the end of the champagne bottle for Christine and Heather to get with the program and raise their glasses.

I didn't need any encouragement and took a long gulp from mine. It was my first drink of alcohol that was intended to be actually tasted before carrying out its brain-buzzing duty. It was as if I hadn't even swallowed anything liquid at all, as if the champagne had vaporized on the back of my tongue before it'd had a chance to go down. And the Byrds had heard of us and saw us and liked us, and these were the actual Byrds, the same guys whose albums I'd bought back in Toronto, the
Mr. Tambourine Man
and
Turn! Turn! Turn!
Byrds. I took another, much smaller sip of the champagne and damn if it didn't lift right off my tongue just like the first time.

“You're saying we ain't going north next week,” Slippery said. He hadn't touched his unopened bottle of Coke.

“Let's not get ahead of ourselves,” Colin said, filling up one last flute, Thomas's. “And for God's sake, don't say anything to anybody, especially anyone from the media. But let's just say I think L.A. is starting to take to you guys as much as you are to it.” He saw my half-filled glass and topped it off; handed Heather Thomas's glass and raised his own.

“To a great beginning for a great new band. To the Duckhead Secret Society.”

Colin's and my clink forced Christine and Slippery to chime in with a reluctant ting of their own. Both Heather and Thomas were over by the amp now, Thomas still sitting on top of it and facing away from us, Heather with her hand on his knee, looking up at him.

“Come on, you two,” Colin said, holding up two fingers so the rest of us wouldn't drink yet. “This is a group toast.”

Heather stared over at us and then up at Thomas and then back at us. She looked like she did the time at the truck stop when she asked me why Thomas kept talking about himself in the third person.

“What is it?” Christine said.

Heather peeked around to get another good look at Thomas,
then over our way again.

“Hurry up, you two,” Colin said. “Our bubbles are starting to pop over here.”

Christine handed me her glass and walked over.

“What's wrong?” Colin asked. “Dom Perignon not good enough for Thomas?” He said it as if it were a joke, but you could tell he was a little miffed. Maybe he was thinking that if it wasn't for Thomas's salad giveaway scheme we'd already be booked at the Fillmore. “I guess I should have got Cristal instead.”

“I don't think it would have mattered,” Christine said, an arm around Heather now and slowly leading her away.

“Why?” he said.

“Take a look for yourself.”

And it is awfully difficult to enjoy even the finest champagne when you've passed out sitting upright on an amplifier with an unopened bag of fresh carrots cradled in your hands. Downright impossible, some people would say.

 

 

It's always his momma and not anybody else who always wakes up when Thomas starts his rocking.

Almost nine now, Thomas doesn't ride the horse any more. Not when he's awake, anyway. Everyone, even Thomas, knows he's outgrown it. But that rocking horse was the best Christmas gift he ever got. The best any kind of gift. There's a photograph his father took with his new colour Kodak of five-year-old Thomas in his white Doctor Denton one-piece cotton sleeper sitting astride his Toddler Wild Rider. The horse is painted sky blue with a white tail and mane and snout and each eye dabbed a hurried blob of splashed black. Brown wooden foot supports and handles sticking out of the animal's hard plastic legs and head make sure the rider stays in the saddle, four coiled springs underpinning each rippling thigh keep the horse moving. In the picture, Thomas is looking right into the camera, pajama-clad feet jammed deep into the tiny stirrups, ten little fingers clenched tight around the ribbed handles. It's hard to tell which is bigger, his all-teeth smile or enormous blue eyes.

Thomas rode that horse. Up in his bedroom, he rode it all day long during his last year at home alone with Selma and his momma. After he started kindergarten he rode it before and after Selma walked him to and from school every day. He even rode it after he'd turned seven and weighed more than the cardboard box the thing came in said he should.

Even his father had to admit that it was kind of cute the way the boy had so taken to the thing. One day he brought him home a cowboy hat and silver-plated gun and holster set from Memphis to complete the getup. Thomas put them both on so his father could take a picture—miniature white Stetson tilted back on his head with both guns raised and blazing—but once his father got the shot he never wore them again. What Thomas liked to do was ride. To get that rhythm going. To make that horse rock and roll until not even him and it any more, just that long slow ride.

 

But now he's nearly nine and the horse has been put out to pasture for some time. Every day that Thomas comes home from school and opens up the door to his room he sees it frozen stiff by his bedroom window but it rarely ever registers. Lollipops and training wheels and rocking horses. Thomas isn't a kid any more. Next spring he's going to be starting quarterback in Pop Warner if he practises taking snaps and throwing spirals to Fat Man Jones long and hard enough. Coach Slaughter says he's got all the natural ability in the world. All he has to do is apply himself, he says.

But sometimes, usually just after midnight when everyone's bedroom door is shut tight for the night, Thomas's mother will open her eyes and lie there in the dark and listen to her son riding his horse.

The first time she heard it, she'd been so terrified there was a prowler loose in the house she'd decided it was worth risking her husband's wrath by waking him up to get his shotgun and go look. But on her way down the hallway to his bedroom she passed by Thomas's and realized that the sound she'd been hearing was the noise of her son's rocking horse. More frightened of what his father would do to him if Thomas woke him up than she had been of the imaginary trespasser, Thomas's mother opened up his door all set to give him his marching orders right back to bed.

She called out his name in a loud whisper but knew instantly that he was sound asleep. The light of the moon coming through the third-storey window was all she had to go by, but his bare feet were where they were supposed to be and both hands gripped the wooden handles and his eyes were definitely wide open. Open but sightless. Full-speed rocking, his pyjamaed bottom raised an inch or two off the saddle, Thomas leaned into his horse like a desperate jockey at the finish line. Except this rider never got to the end, just kept riding and riding.

His mother quietly shut the door. After looking in on her husband and being reassured by his thankfully oblivious snoring, she went back to her own room, took off her housecoat and slippers, and slipped back underneath the sheets. It was March and the window was open halfway. Lying there listening to Thomas's rocking, to the pure, perfect motion of his blind midnight race, she noticed the wind chimes on the veranda tinkling in the night's soft wind.

Later, as spring turned into summer and everyone else in the house could only fall asleep to the loud whir of an electric fan, Thomas's mother would go to bed aided only by a wide-open window so that when she awoke when Thomas would start his rocking, the sound of it and the wind chimes together would keep her company throughout the long, hot night.

THOMAS STARTED TO TURN GREEN. Thomas started to turn orange. And the scariest part of all was that none of us said anything. Not to him or to each other. Heather might have taken him aside and said something on her own about him morphing into a human bruise, but I doubt it. And maybe that's the worst thing about coke. No one talks.

Cocaine is like any other drug—is like any other anything—what you gain one way, you lose in another. Coked-up people get done yesterday what needs to get done today, but coked-up people don't have time for small talk. Even people not coked-up themselves but who hang around people who are coked-up end up catching the same silent drug bug. And tunnel vision is a wonderful thing for taking you places, just don't expect to remember much of what the scenery looked like along the way once you get there.